wDrive for the Apple II

[magnusfalkirk]

Does anybody know much about this drive? I ran across a comment about it when I was reading a post about the FloppyEMU. I found a link to the home page of the group that makes it, but the page said that site had been shut down and supplied a link to a Facebook page. I checked it out but there really isn't a lot of info on it.

So my question actually is twofold: first does anybody know anything about this drive? Second is it worth buying and how much does it cost.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Magnus

[qkumba]

No. Pick any other device. The CFFA3000 is coming back on market. The FloppyEMU, BOOTi, and MD/T are also all great in different ways.

[Bob Piltz]

On Saturday, June 19, 2021 at 9:15:41 PM UTC-7, qkumba wrote:
> No. Pick any other device. The CFFA3000 is coming back on market. The FloppyEMU, BOOTi, and MD/T are also all great in different ways.

Is $225 a reasonable price? What did the CFFA3000 retail for back in the day? $225 seems quite high.

[Todd Holcomb]

On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 3:41:22 AM UTC-5, Bob Piltz wrote:

> Is $225 a reasonable price? What did the CFFA3000 retail for back in the day? $225 seems quite high.

It's reasonable - I paid $200 for my CFFA3000 + remote from R&D Automation 3 years ago.

[Steven Hirsch]

Henry provides an invaluable service to the A2 community and I would never
begrudge him a chance to recoup the considerable investment he's made in time
and money. I doubt Rich Dreher was doing more than just breaking even at the
original price, which probably had a lot to do with his decision to get out of
the business.

I'm just happy to see a continuing source for this device!

[D Finnigan]

It's worth the money if you use your Apple more than a few times a year.
Since I got a CFFA3000 a few years ago, I have basically never connected any
external drives to my Apple.

--
]DF$
The New Apple II User's Guide:
https://macgui.com/newa2guide/

[Bob Piltz]

Seems like it would be enormously useful, for one who only owned a Duodisk for the last ~38 years. As to USB flash card compatibility, I take it only FAT16 partitions are recognized, and obviously the .HDV volume size is still limited to 32MB or 65535 ProDOS blocks? I can't imagine these limits have been somehow circumvented by the firmare. Mention is made of possible .WOZ support, but also, it is probably currently not possible to image and read non-16 sector disk formats and / or fancy things like 1/2 or 1/4 track stepping? How is DOS 3.3 compatibility? Is booting DOS 3.3 images supported? How about 40-track .DSK images?

[Alex Lee]

DOS 3.3 compatibility is great with the CFFA3000 – whatever is on a
.dsk image will run on a CFFA3K. It does full emulation of a 5.25" disk
drive and allows you to mount up to 16 Smartport images all at the same
time. Don't know about 13 sector disks and it won't circumvent 1/2 or
1/4 track stepping – perhaps when and if .woz support is added.

Alex

[magnusfalkirk]

My original question, that seems to have gotten lost in the conversation, is if anyone has heard or knows anything about the wDrive for the Apple II. I was reading some discussions about the Floppy EMU and saw a comment about the wDrive also being able to be hooked up, via Smartport, and working with the //e. //c and IIGS. So I thought I would ask the community at large about it. I already have a CFFA 3000, it's in my GS. What I'm looking for is something to be able to add to my //c to run disk images from.

[cybernesto]

magnusfalkirk wrote:
> So my question actually is twofold: first does anybody know anything about
> this drive? Second is it worth buying and how much does it cost.

I have one and I love it! It supports dsk, po, nib and woz files in Disk II
emulation mode. HDV files set it automatically to smartport mode, without
needing to restart, reset or reconfigure it. This is something that the
FloppyEMU cannot do.
I bought mine some time back as it came with an LCD for about 70$. Later
models have an OLED display. If you don't want to use the small keys or read
the small text on the screen, there is an on screen menu that appears when
no image is selected. This menu also allows you to boot woz images using
Anti-M for those games that were not compatible with later Apple II models.
It also features a shortcut to do fast disk copies using Locksmith.
I really hope that the store goes back online. I have been following the
facebook site for some time and not much has happened. I would like to get a
second one, and I would really recommend it to any fellow enthusiast.

[magnusfalkirk]

I contacted them via email and got quoted $74 for the led version, $79 for the oled version and $18 for the adapter to hook it up to the //c. Thank you for the information that was what I wanted to know. Based on what you have to say about it I just sent him an email asking how to go about ordering one. I'll let you know when I hear from him.

[can...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 11:05:51 AM UTC-3, magnusfalkirk wrote:

> My original question, that seems to have gotten lost in the conversation, is if anyone has heard or knows anything about the wDrive for the Apple II. I was reading some discussions about the Floppy EMU and saw a comment about the wDrive also being able to be hooked up, via Smartport, and working with the //e. //c and IIGS. So I thought I would ask the community at large about it. I already have a CFFA 3000, it's in my GS. What I'm looking for is something to be able to add to my //c to run disk images from.

I'd personally get a Floppy Emu. For a Smartport-enabled IIc, it's really all you will ever need.
You can run hard drive images, .hdv and .2mg, plus 800K .po images, 143K .dsk images, and now apparently it has .woz support.

And it's a great product, reliable, proven and buying it supports a "local" entrepreneur here in North America.